Please provide a response to the fictitious government consultation exercise set out below as if you were answering on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). To complete this exercise you must answer ALL FOUR of the questions. This task carries 50% of the marks for the assessment.
Government Consultation on Women in the Labour Market and Work-Life Balance in the United Kingdom
The government wishes to gather views on the rapidly changing engagement of women with paid work and the implications for policies designed to ensure work-life balance.
Alongside other developed economies, it is clear the UK’s labour market has been transformed in recent years by the growing engagement of women in paid work. For much of the twentieth century, the model of ‘standard’ employment was highly gendered and involved principally men. The long term trend, however, has seen women entering paid work and staying in the labour market for much longer periods. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS 2015) show that economic activity rates for men and women have been narrowing since 1973 and have now converged on a narrow band: 78% of men and 68.5% of women are in work. The employment rate for women is currently the highest since comparable records began in 1971. This reflects ongoing changes to the state pension age for women resulting in fewer women retiring between the ages of 60 and 65.
Q1: What implications for employers flow from the increase in women’s engagement in the labour market?
Clear differences exist nevertheless in the work done by women and men respectively. The Fawcett Society (2013) has drawn attention to continuing pay gaps between women and men of 15%. To a considerable extent, this is due to persistent labour market segregation – put simply women and men still tend to do jobs of different kinds. Several authors have highlighted the importance of the public sector as an employer of women and their relative absence in key parts of the private sector. The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee (BIS 2013) have highlighted occupational segregation as a continuing concern. Similarly, though the number of men working part-time increased through the recession (IPPR undated; ONS 2015) this rate is now declining and overall the majority of such workers are still women and part-time working tends to be a more enduring feature of their working lives. In a series of recommendations at the end of their recent report, the Fawcett Society (Ibid) called for greater government action to expand women’s access to employment opportunities across the private sector (in the context of contraction in public sector employment).
Q2: How does job segregation impact upon the working lives of women and men?
Q3: Is there a case for public policy intervention to support women into non-traditional working environments?
